Request/Proposal for Folder Cloaking

Hi all,

I'm a long time Subversion user, first time poster. I'm a HUGE fan of svn,
but I've used Subversion long enough to know that it isn't a perfect
version control system.

IMHO, outside of Merge Tracking and Improved Rename Support, perhaps the
most glaring need of Subversion (from a practical standpoint, of course) is
the ability to "cloak" or "de-cloak" a folder. For those of you not
familiar with Visual Source Safe, "cloaking" is a server side operation
that allows the repository to exclusively filter "Get Latest" (a.k.a.,
"Update") operations.

So, for example, if I map the following directories:

$/
      Foo/
      Bar/
      Uh/

to the following working copy:

D:\
      Foo\
      Bar\
      Uh\

Any "Get Latest" (a.k.a. "Update") on the D:\ drive would recursively
update the contents of the Foo, Bar, and Uh folders recursively. However,
if we proceeded to "cloak" the Bar folder, a "Get Latest" on the D:\ drive
would update the Foo and Uh folders recursively, but would effectively
ignore the Bar folder and all of the children of the Bar folder. In order
to update the contents of the Bar folder, we would have to "Get Latest" on
the Bar folder.

From a use-case standpoint, I envision Cloaks to be a
Checkout/Update/Commit filter. While in VSS, cloak information was a
function of the user and stored on the repository, I think the cloak
information should be applied only to the working copy. In fact, I don't
think the repository should even have direct knowledge of cloaked elements.

Using an example similar to the one below, if I have the following
repository:

http://source
      /Foo
      /Bar
      /Uh

associated with the following working copy:

D:\
      Foo\
      Bar\
      Uh\

Checkout:

If I wanted to cloak Bar on checkout, I could a -cf [--cloakfile] argument.
An example of such a file would be:

+ /Foo
- /Bar
+ /Uh

Any folder name preceeded by a "-" would be identified as a cloakpoint.

I envision a system similar to
Now, while in VSS "cloak" information was tied to the user, I envision a
system

---
Rohit S. Singh                      Phone: (905) 366-6164
Software Q. A. Developer            Fax: (905) 273-9789
Logitech International S. A.        Toll Free: 1-866-291-1505
Remote Control Business Unit        http://www.logitech.com/harmony
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